While her natural parents were Analea Keohokālole and Caesar Kapaʻakea, she was hānai (informally adopted) at birth by Abner Pākī and Laura Kōnia and raised with their daughter Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

The coup d'état established a Provisional Government which became the Republic of Hawaiʻi, but the ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which was temporarily blocked by President Grover Cleveland.

[9] The third surviving child of a large family, her biological siblings included: James Kaliokalani, David Kalākaua, Anna Kaʻiulani, Kaʻiminaʻauao, Miriam Likelike and William Pitt Leleiohoku II.

[17] The children were taught reading, spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, physics, geography, history, bookkeeping, music and English composition by the missionary couple who had to maintain the moral and sexual development of their charges.

However, according to Liliʻuokalani, certain elements of the court argued "there is no other chief equal to you in birth and rank but the adopted daughter of Paki,"[24][note 3] which infuriated the King and brought the Queen to tears.

Despite this upset, Liliʻuokalani was regarded as a close friend of the new Queen, and she served as a maid of honor during the royal wedding alongside Princess Victoria Kamāmalu and Mary Pitman.

In 1864, she and Pauahi helped Princess Victoria establish the Kaʻahumanu Society, a female-led organization aimed at the relief of the elderly and the ill. At the request of Kamehameha V, she composed "He Mele Lāhui Hawaiʻi" in 1866 as the new Hawaiian national anthem.

In the same year, she also founded the Liliʻuokalani Educational Society, an organization "to interest the Hawaiian ladies in the proper training of young girls of their own race whose parents would be unable to give them advantages by which they would be prepared for the duties of life."

[62] Liliʻuokalani was approached on December 20 and 23 by James I. Dowsett, Jr. and William R. Castle, members of the legislature's Reform (Missionary) Party, proposing her ascension to the throne if her brother Kalākaua were removed from power.

[65][66] After failing to persuade the king to stay, Liliʻuokalani wrote that he and Hawaiian ambassador to the United States Henry A. P. Carter planned to discuss the tariff situation in Washington.

[74] On January 29, 1891, in the presence of the cabinet ministers and the supreme court justices, Liliʻuokalani took the oath of office to uphold the constitution, and became the first and only female monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom.

On March 9, with the approval of the House of Nobles, as required by the Hawaiian constitution, she named as successor her niece Kaʻiulani, the only daughter of Archibald Scott Cleghorn and her sister Princess Likelike, who had died in 1887.

Liliʻuokalani later wrote: "His death occurred at a time when his long experience in public life, his amiable qualities, and his universal popularity, would have made him an adviser to me for whom no substitute could possibly be found.

[note 11] The proposed constitution (co-written by the Queen and two legislators, Joseph Nāwahī and William Pūnohu White) would have restored the power to the monarchy, and voting rights to economically disenfranchised native Hawaiians and Asians.

Anti-monarchists, annexationists, and leading Reform Party politicians that included Lorrin A. Thurston, a grandson of American missionaries, and Kalākaua's former cabinet ministers under the Bayonet Constitution, formed the Committee of Safety in protest of the "revolutionary" action of the queen and conspired to depose her.

Because the members had strong political ties to United States Minister to Hawaii John L. Stevens, the requests were repeatedly denied by the queen's cabinet, who feared that the arrests would escalate the situation.

[125] Cleveland sent the issue to the Congress, stating, "The Provisional Government has not assumed a republican, or other constitutional form, but has remained a mere executive council, or oligarchy, without the consent of the people".

Liliʻuokalani was also arrested and imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom at the palace on January 16, several days after the failed rebellion, when firearms were found at her home of Washington Place after a tip from a prisoner.

The Queen gave George Macfarlane her power of attorney in 1898 as part of her legal defense team in seeking indemnity for the government's seizure of the Crown Lands.

[153] That, the portion of the public domain heretofore known as Crown land is hereby declared to have been, on the twelfth day of August, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, and prior thereto, the property of the Hawaiian government, and to be free and clear from any trust of or concerning the same, and from all claim of any nature what soever, upon the rents, issues, and profits thereof.

[157] Former United States Minister to Hawaii Edward M. McCook said he believed that once President McKinley began his second term on March 1, 1901, that the government would negotiate a generous settlement with Liliʻuokalani.

[163] Although Liliʻuokalani was never successful in more than a decade of legal pursuits for recompense from the United States government for seized land, in 1911 she was finally granted a lifetime pension of $1,250 a month by the Territory of Hawaii.

[164] In April 1917, Liliʻuokalani raised the American flag at Washington Place in honor of five Hawaiian sailors who had perished in the sinking of the SS Aztec by German U-boats.

[165] Subsequent historians have disputed the true meaning of her act; Neil Thomas Proto argued that "her gesture that day was intended to reflect the dignity with which she still held the right of her people to choose their own fate long after she was gone".

[166] By the end of that summer, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported that she was too frail to hold her birthday reception for the public, an annual tradition dating back to the days of the monarchy.

[168] Following several months of deteriorating health that left her without the use of her lower limbs, as well as a diminished mental capacity rendering her incapable of recognizing her own house, her inner circle of friends and caregivers sat vigil for the last two weeks of her life knowing the end was near.

Composer Charles E. King led a youth choir in "Aloha ʻOe" as her catafalque was moved from the palace up Nuuanu Avenue with 1,200-foot ropes pulled by 200 people, for entombment with her family members in the Kalākaua Crypt at the Royal Mausoleum of Mauna ʻAla.

[175] In 1896, she became a regular member of the Hawaiian Congregation at St. Andrew's Cathedral associated with the Reformed Catholic (Anglican/Episcopal) Church of Hawaii, which King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma had founded.

[192] After Liliʻuokalani was imprisoned in the ʻIolani Palace, she was denied literature and newspapers, essentially cutting her off from her people, but she continued to compose music with paper and pencil while she was in confinement.

[223] In March 2023, it was reported that the Royal Standard and certain other artifacts from the auction were purchased by the State of Hawaiʻi using funds donated by the estate of Princess Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawānanakoa and Brendan Damon Ethington.